Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

William D. Ratcliff (Fed)

Dr. William Ratcliff II was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His research career began in high school with internships at the University of Michigan in space physics, chemistry, and nonlinear optics. He attended the University of Michigan for his undergraduate degree and did research there in cosmology and nonlinear optics, as well as interning at Bell Labs. After obtaining his Bachelors in Science and Engineering, he attended graduate school at Rutgers, working in the group of Professor Sang Wook Cheong on CMR manganites, dilute magnetic semiconductors, and frustrated magnets. After finishing his doctorate, he went to the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, Maryland for a National Research Council Postdoc working with Dr. Seunghun Lee on frustrated magnets and multiferroic materials. Afterwards, he joined the staff and has been at NIST for 18 years. Dr. Ratcliff has coauthored over 80 papers whose total citations exceed 5000, given several invited talks at international conferences, and organized workshops on magnetic structure determination. He is the winner of the NIST Bronze Medal (twice), the highest honorary recognition given by the institute. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and an Associate Editor for Science Advances. His current research focus is on topological materials, multiferroic materials, and applications of AI to neutron scattering.

Awards

APS Fellow

NIST Bronze Medal

Publications

Topological Hall effect induced by chiral fluctuations in a kagome lattice

Author(s)
Kyle Fruhling, Alenna Streeter, Sougata Mardanya, Xiaoping Wang, Priya Baral, Oksana Zaharko, Igor Mazin, Sugata Chowdhury, William Ratcliff, Fazel Tafti
Topological Hall effect (THE) is a hallmark of scalar spin chirality, which is found in static skyrmion lattices. Recent theoretical works have shown that

Antiferromagnetic Metal Phase in an Electron-Doped Rare-Earth Nickelate

Author(s)
Qi Song, Spencer Doyle, Grace Pan, Ismail El Baggari, Dan Segedin, Denisse Cordova Carrizales, Johanna Nordlander, Christian Tzschaschel, James Ehrets, Zubia Hasan, Hesham El-Sherif, Jyoti Krishna, Chase Hanson, Harrison LaBollita, Aaron Bostwick, Chris Jozwiak, Eli Rotenberg, Su-Yang Xu, Alessandra Lanzara, Alpha N'Diaye, Colin Heikes, Yaohua Liu, Hanjong Paik, Charles Brooks, Betul Pamuk, John Heron, Padraic Shafer, William D. Ratcliff, Antia Botana, Luca Moreschini, Julia A. Mundy
Long viewed as passive elements, antiferromagnetic materials emerged as promising candidates for spintronic devices due to their insensitivity to external

Unravelled and Glassy Magnetism in PbFe1/2Nb1/2O3 - (2) Neutron Scattering

Author(s)
C. Stock, B. Roessli, Peter M. Gehring, Jose Rodriguez Rivera, N. Giles-Donovan, S. Cochran, Guangyong Xu, P. Manuel, M. J. Gutmann, William D. Ratcliff, T. Fennell, Y. Su, X. Li, H. Luo
We apply neutron scattering to investigate the magnetism in the relaxor ferroelectric PbFe 1/2Nb 1/2O 3 (PFN). Similar to the lack of spatially long-range
Created October 9, 2019, Updated December 8, 2022